Gore concludes that "[t]he regularization and intensification of the President's personal communication with these two constituencies--the public at home and the audience abroad--promise to complicate his relations with" Congress and his own staff. "Consequently," Gore writes, "a key factor in this trend is the increasing importance of the President's personality."

Auguring, perhaps, the skills of a future boss of his, Gore writes that would-be presidents would be wise to learn the art of "visual communication."

You Can Call Me Al

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Although Gore was a Government concentrator, did his thesis on politics, and was lucid in political debates, his earnestness to actually participate in politics wasn't as obvious as the media makes it out to have been.

Far from having a pre-ordained career path chosen for him by his father, Gore told his roommates that he had no idea what he wanted to do in life.

"He wasn't earnest. He was normal. Earnest is put on him in contradistinction to normal. In fact, he was extremely normal," Somerby says.

Adults who knew him then said they saw a very driven, intense young man, at times confused about the direction he wanted his life to take.

Author Erich Segal, on a sabbatical at Harvard in 1968, used Gore as a model for the serious side of the hero of Love Story, later a blockbuster movie.